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Ultimate Academy X Arcs
Please note the following summaries assume a basic knowledge of the setting's main characters and their abilities. The Wake In the wake of the Ultimatum, a tidal wave caused by Magneto, most of New York City was devastated. With the residents forced to relief camps sponsored by Roxxon in New Jersey, Zeke, Jade and Amber tried to track down the rest of their friends from Midtown High: Julian Keller, Cessily Kincaid, and Kitty Pryde. In the morning, Roxxon representatives dispersed through the camp distributing aid to the refugees, and news of delayed food shipments reached the group. When the conversation with Sofia Barret, an intern at Roxxon, got no results, Zeke decided to go help himself, only for Amber to insist on going with him. They found that the food shipments had been delayed by members of a gang of Banshee dealers, who were planning on selling the food to the refugees. The confrontation quickly turned hostile when Zeke shot one of the group, Chester, in the stomach. The battle escalated, and by the time the fighting subsided, the local police were on their way, with both groups retreating. Upon returning, Amber, Zeke, and Jade met the Moonstars, one of the bands performing for the fund raising concert at the camp. Their new vocalist, Jay Gardner, received accolades for his beautiful voice during performance. The relative peace after the show was disrupted as the remaining members of the Banshee gang arrived at the camp looking for Zeke. They claimed that Zeke's shot had killed Chester, and that several mutants are being held hostage at Roxxon, at least one of both group's friends among them. Apparently, Roxxon had falsely claimed to be distributing antibiotics when in fact they had been injecting sub-clinical levels of Banshee into refugees in search of mutants with dormant X-genes. The two groups agree to temporarily join forces to liberate their friends from Roxxon. Amber, Zeke, Jade, Julian and Kevin broke into Roxxon's labs while Kevin has the remaining members of the gang kept watch in the parking lot. After a not-so-quiet trek through the air vents, the group located the hidden holding cells. Nori, Sofia, Cessily, Santo, Josh and Spider-Man were all among the mutants who had been kidnapped by Roxxon. Upon freeing their friends, Roxxon's security forces sprang into action and trapped the group in the prison-room. With aid from an auditory and a psychic voice, Amber lead the group to the roof of the labs, where a helicopter was parked. While Zeke prepared the helicopter for take-off, Amber dared the battle in the parking lot between Roxxon's security forces and nightmarish creatures summoned by the youngest member of the Banshee gang, Celia, who had been abandoned by Tag and Kevin. She managed to rescue the girl and the group escaped via helicopter. Guided once again by some psychic voice, Amber helped Zeke navigate to an abandoned little stone church near Jamaica Bay, where the mental voice coalesced into a woman claiming to be Emma Frost. She explained that she had been left in a coma after the attack on her Academy of Tomorrow in Chicago, but her telepathic abilities would allow her to communicate with, and most importantly, train the young mutants in the use of their abilities. Days of Future Past As the mutants began their training and fell into a routine, so too did the shattered city of New York. Slowly, bit by bit, the city began to rebuild. Most of the damage was concentrated on the island of Manhattan, allowing the boroughs on Long Island, including Queens, to return to a semblance of normalcy within months after the Ultimatum Wave. For the young mutants, this meant a return to class at Midtown High. While Santo found himself barred from the school because of his inhuman appearance, the rest of the mutants returned, keeping their abilities hidden from administrators and classmates. It was amidst the return to homework and gym class and subpar school lunches that Ms. Frost directed the students to their first mission: the retrieval of a machine called "Cerebro" from the former base of operations of the X-Men in West Chester, New York. Their first attempt at breaking into the sub-levels of the building was frustrated by the mansion's passive defenses. The next day, at school, Zeke and Amber were approached by a strange girl who claimed that she could help them retrieve the device, but that before they could do it, they'd need the help of another mutant. So Zeke and Amber trekked across Queens that afternoon to enlist the aid of Sooroya Qadir, whose mutant ability allowed her to transform into sand. The mutants returned to the mansion in West Chester, finding that they had been followed by the strange girl from their school, who claimed to be a mutant named Talon, and offered guidance for how they could enter the room that contained the Cerebro unit. Unfortunately, the room's defenses incapacitated Sooroya after she had entered, forcing Cessily to manifest her mutation fully and slip into the room to rescue Sooroya and open the doors. With the Cerebro unit in hand, they exited the mansion to discover that a large number of Reavers had gathered outside. The mutants hot-wired a van and made a break for it, only for one Reaver, a man named Cletus Kassiday, to leap into their van. His attempts to slash Sooroya were thwarted by Santo's rocky hide, and while the bullet Zeke had intended for his head was telekinetically blocked by Amber, Santo's foot proved sufficient to eject the man from the van. Back at the church they'd been using as a base of operations, the team almost came to blows. Zeke was livid that Amber would save an enemy combatant and put the team's lives at risk, and Amber thought that his willingness to shoot first and ask questions later was barbaric. There was a brief heart-to-heart between Talon and Zeke, where she gave him some cryptic advice that "X-Men don't kill". After the team had recovered, Talon approached them once again to repay the favor she'd extended to them: she wanted the mutants to help her break into the Roxxon labs again to rescue someone. The mutants agreed and prepared for the operation, returning to Roxxon once again. Inside, they faced off against two Roxxon test subjects: Omega Red and Sandman. The mutants managed to overcome the two of them and reached a secure area of the labs, where they rescued a woman named Sarah Kinney and her newborn daughter, as well as a mutant girl called Ankh. While the latter mutant fled after the team escaped from Roxxon's labs once again, Sarah Kinney and her baby were secreted away by Talon. The other mutants confronted Talon upon her return, and while she was tight-lipped, she admitted that she had traveled back from the future for the sole purpose of rescuing her infant self, so that she could be spared the horrible life she'd led. She also hinted that the mutants would form the core of a new generation of X-Men. Gangs of New York As the team settled into their new routine, they were forced to struggle more and more with the consequences of their new lives. Cessily found herself kicked out of her home by her parents, who were unable to accept her mutation, forcing her to stay first with Santo's family, and eventually at the house Julian had bought for the homeless members of the team. Nori was forced to face her Banshee addiction, and with the aid of Kitty and Peter Parker, was able to find an alternative to the drug in a pair of electric gauntlets that could regulate her powers. Amber discovered that young Celia was haunted by a troubled past and plagued by nightmares that actually caused her physical injuries. Zeke found himself forced to deal with the return of his old unit of mutant killers for hire. Meanwhile, Jay's careless attitude began to drive a wedge between himself and the rest of the Moonstars, especially Dani. Thus it came as something of a shock for Amber to find the two of them making out in the control booth of their recording studio after hours, something which Dani claimed to have no memory of after the fact. It wasn't long after that Jay left the band and went out on his own to "hold court" at a dance club built in an old warehouse, bringing together mutants and humans for the common goal of unity. Zeke and Amber pressed Jay about all that had transpired until he revealed that "he" was actually Jay's older sister, Paige. Paige explained that she had used her abilities to transform into her brother after Wither accidentally killed Jay to help achieve his dream. Even after his death, however, Jay's voice lived on, and in this form, his mutant powers awakened. Jay inhabited Paige's body as her "voice", but could also possess and control others who heard his voice (explaining what had happened to Dani). Paige then pleaded with Zeke and Amber to keep her secret. Across town, Sooroya was being terrorized by a mysterious stalker who was leaving the wings of butchered pigeons on her doorstep. Zeke and Amber teamed up with Spider-Man and Daredevil investigate the matter, and with Cessily, Nori and Sofia's help, were able to eventually hunt down and capture Cletus Kasiday, the Reaver who had become obsessed with Sooroya. Daredevil discovered that Cletus had exhibited conduct disorder and violent behavior as a youth, and was well on his way to becoming a full-fledged serial killer. Days before the official reopening and rededication of the city of New York (Life Day), the mutants learned that someone was once again stalking Sooroya and leaving dismembered pigeons on her doorstep. Zeke and Amber found that one of Zeke's old teammates, Masque had been hired by the Roxxon Corporation to pose as Kasiday while he was under house arrest. They went to question Wither, who had taken up residence in Jay's warehouse-headquarters. They learned that not only had Vitriol survived the shooting, but that Wither had deliberately lied about it to use Zeke's guilt against him. Wither was unapologetic, but was willing to explain how his powers had come about. He too had been a victim of the Roxxon Corporation. He sought out help to control the toxins his body secreted which made his touch lethal, and they instead used stolen Stark Industries technology to infuse him with a nanofleet controlled by a powerful AI. With practice, Wither was able to control this nanofleet and implant commands in people he touched, which could be activated at the cost of the thrall's health as the nanites degraded the thrall's body. The other piece of the puzzle fell into place after the team found Daredevil near death. Josh managed to heal Daredevil, who described fighting a creature that Spider-Man identified as Carnage. Daredevil swore that it was Cletus Kasiday. He also revealed that he knew of Wither's experience with Roxxon, and that the actual intent of the project that Wither had been subjected to was the creation of an AI capable of running a new mutant-hunting machine that Roxxon could use to compete with Trask Industries' Sentinel Project. This "NIMH-Rod", the nanofleet that infected Wither and all his thralls, could be combined with a cataloging and learning AI project that Kitty had been tinkering with in her spare time, called "Lockheed", to create a terrible threat to mutants everywhere. When Spider-Man pointed out that Carnage has been capable of absorbing memories before, the realization that he could piece together how to complete the project spurred the team to search with new urgency. Wither contacted them to report that Kasiday had reunited with the Reavers, and they were planning a massive attack on Jay's headquarters. After much deliberation, the mutants decided that they'd need to use this opportunity to capture Kasiday and defeat the Reavers once and for all. They laid an intricate trap for the Reavers, soliciting aid from some of Zeke's old unit, the Banshee gang, and Ankh, the mutant they'd rescued from the Roxxon labs on their last visit. In a pitched battle, this alliance managed to defeat the Reaver gang utterly. The gang's ringleader, Donald Pierce, was brought into custody, along with dozens of Reavers, though Carnage escaped. At Julian's instance, the mutants all wore shirts marked with large "X"s during the melee, to help identify friend from foe, and this fashion choice led a reporter who witnessed the battle to speculate about whether or not the X-Men had returned. Advanced Placement On the night of the Life Day dance, the mutants found that Midtown High was becoming an increasingly inhospitable place. Santo and Cessily, the only two with visible physical mutations, were harassed endlessly about whether or not they'd been part of the fight against the Reavers. With the city passing a new ordinance prohibiting the use of mutant powers within city limits, the school administrators questioned whether they should allow Cessily or Santo into school any longer, resulting in the two of them being ejected from the Life Day dance. Faced with this hardship, they and the other mutants began to openly speculate about alternatives to Midtown High, and wonder if they could locate the original X-Men for help.